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I was just thinking what time era each FF is based in? If this has been posted before please delete this.

Hard to say, because I don't believe they all take place on the same world.

Some, like FFX, take place in a very futuristic environment, where technology of the past is being rediscovered. This theme is echoed, I believe, in FF1.



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Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

No idea if there's a similar topic, and also a bit stumpted for search terms.

I generally reckon by the technology not magically enhanced for each era the games are set in. All dates are equivelant by technology.

FF1: About 1300AD.
FF2: About the same.
FF3: N/A: have not player.
FF4: About 1500.
FF5: About 1400.
FF6: 19th century/Early 20th century.
FF7: Late 20th/Early 21st Century (Did you know the Gelnika was actually quite advanced?)
FF8: The same as 7, but Esthar seems to be a little ahead (Dropships, particle cannons, antigrav...)
FF9: About 1500.
FF10: Theoretically, they should be far ahead in terms of tech and are, but Yevon being technophobic and all, combined with Sin, they've stagnated. X-2 has technological innovation taking off, and it's at a level slightly ahead of us.

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"Only the dead have seen the end of their quotes being misattributed to Plato."
-George Santayana

"The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here..."
-Abraham Lincoln, prior to the discovery of Irony.

Quote (Del S @ 22nd June 2006 17:51)

FF1: About 1300AD.
FF2: About the same.
FF3: N/A: have not player.
FF4: About 1500.
FF5: About 1400.
FF6: 19th century/Early 20th century.
FF7: Late 20th/Early 21st Century (Did you know the Gelnika was actually quite advanced?)
FF8: The same as 7, but Esthar seems to be a little ahead (Dropships, particle cannons, antigrav...)
FF9: About 1500.
FF10: Theoretically, they should be far ahead in terms of tech and are, but Yevon being technophobic and all, combined with Sin, they've stagnated. X-2 has technological innovation taking off, and it's at a level slightly ahead of us.

That makes perfect sense thanks.

FFI and FFX have a sort of 'rediscovering ancient technology' thing going on with them.

FFII, II, IV, V, and IX have a 'private technology' thing where only some people get technology.

FFVI is set in an industrial era, the first truly 'modern' setting.

FFT was like FFI and X.

FFVII and VIII are set in a modern era, technology probably equal to now.

FFXII is also set in an industrial era, from the looks of it. More airships, at the least.

FFXIII is set in a very futuristic environment, probably more advanced than the technology of today.

This post has been edited by Zeromus_X on 23rd June 2006 01:05

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XRagnarok

Seeing as none of them take place on Earth, I don't think you can really place them in an era of any sorts. Often there'll be multiple civilizations, like

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

FF9 and the Genomes

making them sorta-post-futuristic-but-actually-renaissance/industrial-revolution-type eras. Worse yet, often there'll be a major shift in the overall era of the game from one location to the next. FF7 has Midgar, a hyper-futuristic city, and then a quiet little present-day village RIGHT outside, near a small family-owned farm. FF6, possibly the worst of them all from this point of view, goes from metal-and-mech futuristic Vector to medieval knight-and-king castles and industrial revolution mining towns.

Eras? Not really. Very inconsistent often enough, in fact. Why all the cheap mining equipment (bamboo (?) cages, pickaxes, shovels, and other assorted muscle-operated tools) in Narshe when the king of a castle not a day's walk away can operate drills and has the technology to submerge an entire castle in sand? Hell if my economy were based on mining, I'd damned well at least strike a deal with the neighbouring country and import some of their techonology over to my snow-covered town... not that the whole snow thing is any weird when their castle is smack in the middle of a scorching desert just a few miles away... It's like Square just took random settings, spliced them up, and rearranged them together with absolutely NO consideration for the way they'd work out in relation to each other.

From that point of view, the FF series was very poorly designed and is far from being the masterpiece people hail it as even today. Luckily there's more to the series than the setting and how consistent it is throughout the games.

This post has been edited by Silverlance on 23rd June 2006 01:24

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"Judge not a man by his thoughts and words, but by
the quality and quantity of liquor in his possession
and the likelyhood of him sharing."

Is technology the best measure of an equivalent time era? I mean, it seems like that's the default assumption and Del's done the best he can given the limited information available.

Looking at it from a civilization/societal prospective, one can infer a different sort of timeline.

FF1 - ~Dark Ages (400-800 AD), similar to European kingdoms but not much further ahead.
FF4, FF5, FF9 - Capable of ocean-faring travel and colonization, basic kingships warring over minor pieces of land. European 12-15th century.
FF6 - An Empire on the verge of conquering the world, with massive technological advancements and a completely different governing structure than its rivals. We're looking at either Roman Empire (100 AD during Trajan) or during Pax Britannica (~1800 AD).
FF7 - World-wide trade, corporations as governments, we're looking at some sort of post-21st century timeline. Weyland-Yutani would be pleased.
FF8 - A global economy is possible though certain countries seem content being on their own. There doesn't seem to be much in terms corporate power though, so we're looking at mid-20th century.
FFX - They're a post-apocalyptic world still off-balance by constant monster attacks. We can look at this as continual decline of high-technology. This would suggest 600 AD or so, post-Western Roman Empire collapse. Note the growing dominance of religion into the affairs of the world, similar to the rise of the Roman-Catholic Church.


Combining this with technological eras would give you a good grasp of the development of these worlds. However, there is the often-used plot device of "Golden Days Past"... you know, that ancient Empire that was awesome in every single way except for the fact that they're dead. That makes things really difficult to measure. Consider that the Roman Empire's collapse during ~400 AD led to such a huge setback of technology that only during the 18th Century did we finally catch up. The FF-worlds are so violent that these cycles of civilization are incredibly common.

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Visions of Peace - Four Generals, One Empire, and the Returners caught in the middle.

You know, I think this topic has been brought up like 1,000 times and we never really get much of anywhere with it... it's hard to say when they were set when all of them have elements of the past like swords and knights and mages, and also from the future like a flying airship and cannons that fire raw nuclear energy (mako cannon FFVII). I don't normally try to fit them into an era. It just makes it even more complicated.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles

I always thought that the Square FinalFantasy worlds were an exaggeration of our
own. Certainly, our own Earth is littered with pockets of civilizations, and swaths of
nothingness. My best example of this would be the image I also use for my desktops,
attached. This is a night photo of the earth in moonlight, with areas of civilization all
the more obvious because of their light emissions. Airship it to NewYork, and you'd be
surrounded by a dense, urban technological civilization with modern trappings and an
almost magical sense of ability (groceries ordered online or by cellphone, delivered to
your door; information at your fingertips via wifi net devices; medical and policial
services present in moments---at least compared to the country). Land in the frozen
craziness that is northern Canada, not too far away, and those amenities vanish. There
are whole stretches of desert without civilization, and even the once-dense rainforests
of Brazil are starting to show some signs of urban encroachment---but there's also an
area roughly the size of the midwest where civilization is scarce. Fly to Africa and
visit towns desperately trying to keep their potatoes and rice from dying early in the
rising temperatures of a global climate change, and then a bustling, midTwentieth
century city of SouthAfrica at the tip. Squalor and splendor are often side-by-side in
India. And in China, the government has all the technology, and their people slave
under early Twentieth-century technology for agriculture and basic medicine. Thus,
it is a default for Square to create mashup worlds of various technological peaks and
valleys, but our own isn't without similarities.



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Putting the A's in W lm rt: A11smart, Jobclass: Retailer.

Trying to pigeonhole the various Final Fantasy worlds into Earth's eras seems artificial at best and impossible at worst. Traditionally, Final Fantasy is a medieval world with occasional instances of highly advanced technology, such as airships and floating structures. This is something you'd almost never see in a real civilization, because people have a habit of adapting existing technology for other uses.

One other difficulty, as some people have mentioned, is magic. Magic stands alone to create advanced effects that are beyond the existing technology level. For example, a mage can generate lightning, even though the civilization doesn't know how electricity works. Magic is also frequently fused with technology. Magitek (FF6), for example, infuses the magical energy of the Espers into machines and people.

I think we can all agree, though, that some Final Fantasy games -- particularly the newer ones -- have more advanced technology than others, but it is often difficult to sort out what is pure technology and what is magic-driven.

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The world before the fall...
Delightful is the light of dawn...
Noble is the heart of man...

Quote (Del S @ 22nd June 2006 17:51)

No idea if there's a similar topic, and also a bit stumpted for search terms.

I generally reckon by the technology not magically enhanced for each era the games are set in. All dates are equivelant by technology.

FF6: 19th century/Early 20th century.
FF7: Late 20th/Early 21st Century (Did you know the Gelnika was actually quite advanced?)
FF8: The same as 7, but Esthar seems to be a little ahead (Dropships, particle cannons, antigrav...)
FF9: About 1500.
FF10: Theoretically, they should be far ahead in terms of tech and are, but Yevon being technophobic and all, combined with Sin, they've stagnated. X-2 has technological innovation taking off, and it's at a level slightly ahead of us.

Hmm that does make sense.

This post has been edited by Silver 09 on 16th July 2006 15:16